“Okay, so look,” the coach said, “this is the championship game. We’re down twenty, and this is the fourth quarter, but the game isn’t over yet. We still have a chance, we just gotta play! Now I want you to get in there and play ball! I look at y’all and you look like you ain’t working together, you ain’t playing to play, and most of all, you ain’t having fun! How did we get here? By working together, by playing ball, and by having fun! Now let’s get out there and have some fun!”

While the coach was trying to get the team in the mood, as I looked around, it looked like most of the team didn’t want to hear it. For some reason, everyone seemed bummed out by being down twenty in the fourth quarter, but the way I see it, in this all important championship game, I only saw it as a challenge, a time where our team could show what we’re made of. Unfortunately, I was the only one who saw it that way, and I was a player that was coming off the bench. I’m not that great of a basketball player, strictly average, but I know the game well enough to play, and my skill are solid enough to perform. Of course, when you have the five best players on the team playing a bad game, it would seem as though your chances of winning are slim, right?

Of course they are. But at this particular time, I had an idea that, if it worked, would get the team all fired up. Of course, it had to work.

The five best players on our team went back into the game at the start of the fourth quarter. Each quarter was eight minutes, and this was about to be either the greatest or worst eight minutes of the tournament. Two minutes passed, and it seemed like this was going to be the worst eight minutes of the tournament, as our deficit went up to twenty three. At that point, the coach called time out.

“Well, I don’t what else I can tell you,” he said. “All I can say is you guys had a good season. You played great up until this point, and you know what? I can’t ask for more of you than you can possibly give.”

At this point, I decided that I’d ask the question that could possibly change the entire game. “Coach, can I play?”